The CX Blog

The title of a recent post caught my eye as I was perusing the aisles of blogs on Alltop.com. The Mummy, the Tart, and the Mystery Station was the name, and it was a post on the Wells Fargo blog. Ruh?

I had to click through to that, I thought maybe there’d been some tech glitch that put someone else’s post on Wells Fargo’s site. But no, the post was real and it really was WF, from November 19th.

The WF blog, called Guided By History, chronicles the roads the original Wells Fargo stagecoaches traveled. The author, Casey, is video posting and blogging his way overland, and in this case, into California down by the border, the Anza Borrego desert, parts of which remind him of the movie, The Mummy (hence the title).

And as you can probably guess, the “Tart” of the title is of the pastry kind, which he enjoys in the little town of Julian outside San Diego, a town known for its pies and pastries.

The Mystery Station is the Vallecito Station, one of the few remaining stations–albeit a reconstruction–of what they old Wells Fargo stations looked like.

What I like about this blog is that it’s real. I love the Southwest, it’s my natural home, so of course there’s the aspect of this road trip that makes me smile. But it’s more than that–it’s that Wells Fargo is at least attempting to say that they are about more than just banking. They have at least a branded attachment to a living history, if not a real one.

This blog does what so many company blogs want to do: it humanizes the company in a tangential, but meaningful way. I learned about some stuff that makes me think nice, happy thoughts about Wells Fargo, even if they didn’t mention the bank once in the whole post.

Bravo, Wells Fargo!

A year ago, ACSI rating of Apple had dropped by 5%. In Q2 (as Apple’s recent PC/Mac ads attest), Apple’s satisfaction rating has zoomed up to an outstanding 85%.

Interestingly, in the same quarter, the PC industry as a whole dropped a tad. Both directions may have something to do with their product lines: Vista has been a difficult transition for PC users, and though last year’s launch of the iPhone and related iPod products was rocky, it has ultimately proven extremely successful.

Customer satisfaction with PCs retreats for a second year, falling 1.3% to 74 to match the level of 2004-2005. Except for Dell (up 1%), the drop is connected with the Windows-based machines - Hewlett-Packard, Gateway, and Compaq are all down by 4%. Not only is Apple bucking the slide, it registers its greatest ACSI increase ever (up 8% to 85) to lead the industry by a wide margin. The satisfaction of Apple PC customers is 13% higher than Dell in second place and 21% higher than Compaq. This is one of the largest gaps in customer satisfaction in any industry covered by ACSI. It is also a record high for Apple.

I would add that with the launch of iPhone 2.0, and its many, many problems impacting lots of aspects of Mac synching, Apple stepped up and did the right thing in a bad situation: their direct email clearly owning the trouble and offering a token love-offering was a near pitch-perfect rapid response. That’s a Moment of Truth.

Since then, my own infrequent dealings with Apple have indicated they’ve clearly beefed up their support ranks and made getting help a lot easier and reliable. My own experience with the Time Capsule has been pretty dismal and I suspect I regret buying it at this point, to the degree that I am slow to buy another Apple product now, but still….I know I’ll be an Apple user for life, unless things go south in a big way. That’s in part because of their product line which I mostly love, and their support which has been smart and useful.

And that, to me, is a great customer experience.

Jay Deragon of Pitch Engine blog writes a good article questioning the discussion around ROI for social media, the underlying question seeming to be: those who seek ROI above all else probably don’t get it. Reason: how can you reasonably measure human interaction?

The best you can do is come up with measurements that make you feel okay about participating in something you probably don’t really understand.

Finally, his discussion makes me think about how companies used to build reputation before the monster-sized industry of Marketing came about–say back in the 40’s or early 50’s. By the 60’s it was all over–advertising was king. Prior to that, did companies rely on WOM in ways that are more applicable to how we use social media now? And did biz people back then have an understanding of socially driven WOM that current biz people are struggling to grasp?

As a yoga aficionada, I was interested in a recent post at the Graco company blog site that talked about starting a yoga class. What struck me about this post was how focused it was on the human side of the company–not pushing products, but rather “walking-the-walk,” or in other words being what they advertise:

So much happens at Graco whether we are developing new resources for parents or being parents ourselves. Stop by often and hear directly from members of the Graco family about our passion….

Today’s post was about setting up internal yoga sessions for employees who can never find enough “me” time to get the health benefits of yoga. The author of the post, Melissa Landis, was mentioned briefly how they are utilizing streaming sessions and meditative music–such a cool way to take as good care of themselves as their products hope to take care of new parents and kids.  That’s walking-the-walk.

On a conceptual level–and far from the fray of implementing such things–it appears the C-level in organizations “get it” when it comes to social networking and the web 2.0 revolution.  In fact a full 85% get it–that’s pretty impressive.

According to Blog Council and reported in the EIU Media Directory, the upper reaches of organizations are jazzed about the potential of web 2.0 and social networking to help them reach customers directly, leverage the support that communities offer, get solid feedback and hear the all-important voice of the customer.  This is excellent news.

Because even though the implementation of these initiatives is where the rubber meets the road, the vision, motivation and championship has to come from above.

Key findings:

• Customers are helping to develop and support products.
• Ease of acquiring and supporting customers provide the biggest financial benefits. innovation.
• Early adopters are to be found in many countries and industries.
• The C-suite is more enthusiastic than lower-level executives
• CFOs are the most skeptical about the potential of Web 2.0.

Read more here.

A quick round up of a few conversations happening out there re Customer Experience, Service and support issues…

• An article from Search Marketing Gurus on how people are now cruising through social media to find out the lowdown on a company’s service reputation:  Using Social Media to Research Customer Service Experiences. Would you believe 72% use it? And customers listen to what they discover: only 3% never take what they learn into consideration when interacting with a company.
• The Blog Council suggests we stop using the scary term Social Media, even thought it’s cool, cuz, well, it’s scary to lots of companies out there–Lose the Social Media Label. Better to simply refer to apps and what they do: they enable customers to help each other, they allow the company to reach a wide audience quickly, they help people learn what their customers really want.
• Craig Daitsch over at Advertising Age was skeptical about the use of apps like Twitter is really able to do much more than just show that a company is hip and/or willing to join the conversation–Socializing Customer Service. Skeptical until Tokbox–a video chat app– made a believer out of him.
• Advergirl started a four part discussion of how companies are using social media–and how it might help you. Social Manifesto - How Companies are using Social Media. First lesson:  let your customers and employees help each other.  Pros and Cons outlined.

That ought to keep you reading for a bit.

Razorfish recently released their 2008 report Feed on the Consumer Experience. It’s really quite alot of information, and good stuff too, with plenty of great graphics; I ended up reading it in the pdf form, though, because the browser experience wasn’t so good.  I’ve been making my way through it and thought I’d share some notes:

Goal: study how advances in technologies are changing the way we engage with the internet. Study stats:

• 1006 users with broadband access
• spent $200 online last year (easy!)
• visited community site(s)
• consumed or created some form of digital media

Biggest change: mass acceptance of social media. Top sites include YouTube, Myspace, Facebook, classmates, flickr.

Biggest take-away: the role of the individual influencer continues to grow.

Bright spots for retailers: personalized recommendations & loyalty programs are key.  The higher the spend, the more important these personal/social connections become.

Mobile usage is way up–26% have smart phones.

Distribution: one-stop destination sites continue to face framentation; preference for aggregators.

Mashups for mobile use will continue rapid growth as popularity of use increases.

On Jakob Nielsen:

by Tim Richards

Nielsen has been designing web pages rather than experiences.  Suggest not starting with wire frames, but w experience.  Discover the user’s story first, and then make a site that responds to the story.  This would be a semantic site.  Pages relate to each, the initial portal being the user’s goal or desire.

Everything designed in context of everything else.  The end of static pages that force info on users that they don’t want.

On Micro-interactions

by Marisa Gallagher and Shiv Singh

At the heart of it is a belief that immediacy, simplicity, voyeurism, and constant communication matter more all the time.

Shorter bursts of info for the time-and-attention stretched.

Predict migration into enterprise consciousness soon, with apps to follow.

Widget-World

by Garrick Schmitt

His question, “Is the home page dead?” says it all.

Putting users in control of content to enable access wherever, whenever.

Is this the third wave of software properties? Perfect for mobile devices. “Widgets provide the purest glimpse to the new, improved network of the future.”

Bottom up vs. Top down future

Moving from content consumers to content creators–rapidly.  Mass user generated content is on the brink of meeting the Semantic Web.  How will that be done?  Auto-tagging, sentiment detection (problematic at this point).

Some examples that point to the future: flickr and Library of Congress created The Commons. Others, Wikipedia, Freebase, Twine, Nasa Clickwise.

Commonalities: fun, personally beneficial, social. And if it contributes to the semantic web, even better.

Oh the Voice of the Customer.  How and when to get it, and what to do with it once you have it…that’s the question.

Just had a great conversation with Lonnie Mayne of Mindshare.  Mindshare does CS surveys through multiple channels combined with a strong reporting component.  We’ve used Mindshare on a couple of projects and I’m looking forward to another one soon.

Mindshare has a smart perspective on both making sure the customer is heard and that what the company hears is acted on.  One cool CX story Lonnie shared with me was:

We do surveys for a lot of athletic and sporting fields, including Wrigley field.  A couple of years ago, one of their visitors who had a seat in one of the suites ordered Chicken Fingers.  It was delivered, and she signed the receipt that would bill the suite.

At the bottom of the receipt in big letters was access to phone, web, or email to give feedback–our Mindshare system.  Unfortunately, the Chicken Fingers she ordered wasn’t very good–it was cold, not very tasty, just wrong, so she called the number and gave her feedback.

Her feedback and low rating sent an immediate alert to the VP of Ops who was of course onsite on game day.  He could listen to the MP3 file which was attached to a profile which allowed him to know who she was and where she was sitting.  He had the staff remake the order, took it himself to the suite and presented it to her, apologizing for the previous order.

This all happened in the space of 15 minutes.  The customer looked around the room for video cameras, wondering how they knew so much so fast–she was impressed and thrilled.

Kind of story companies love to be able to tell, and kind of story customers associate with magic–how’d they do that?

During our conversation though, Lonnie was quick to point out an important aspect that is key to their approach: actionable feedback–both negative and positive.  To me that’s important and here’s why:  often, surveys are done by those who have a grudge or complaint–the survey is hard to find or use and usually filed by those with enough angry determination/motivation to give feedback. Like the story above, the solution–the action-, while maybe not always easy, is pretty obvious for those who care about their brand and customer.

The other action that he focused on was internal positive action.  Getting good feedback, using it to rally the troops, raise the bar and model behavior is just as important as making things right for the customer.  When the customer says something was perfect, the whole team needs to know and especially the associate directly involved.

Using the Voice of the Customer works both ways–externally for brand and loyalty, and internally for motivation and modeling behavior.  Mindshare has an excellent focus on both with real-time, actionable reporting and strategic planning for how/when/what.

Your brand and all the buzz around it is made up of a zillion micro-experiences–that’s Customer Service as the new Marketing in action.  With all virtual channels open 24/7, enabling conversations about your company to happen globally all the time, the actual experience of your company trumps what you say about your company.  Seth Godin has been hammering this home for a few years now, and a growing number of companies are finally getting it.

Last spring, Ad Age’s David Armano discussed this concept of micro-experiences, and the proposal that traditional marketing is brand 1.0: Our product is what we say it is.  He uses Google as the poster-child of Brand 2.0,:

Ever wonder how on Earth Google went from a technology company to one of the world’s most recognizable and successful brands? Was it the whimsical brightly colored logo? How about the ads? Wait, Google really doesn’t advertise all that much — do they?

Brand Google was built on a lot of different things. If brand 1.0 was Coke, built on a solid foundation of marketing, then brand 2.0 is more like Google, built on an ecosystem of experience and natural word of mouth referrals.

A few days ago, Katie Paries continued this discussion on the Razorfish blog with her post Customer Service is the New Marketing. She makes some good points about how to approach this sea change, and while the hard work of really navigating this new frontier is still very much in its early days, she uses Zappos as the benchmark for how its done, T-mobile for how its not done, Comcast for how to breathe new life into battered CX brand and overall has some good thoughts to add to the mix:

Listen and communicate. Put conversations at the center.
Don’t kill conversation by blocking out customers. Friction-free conversation is the new norm in Web 2.0 – except when it comes to talking to companies.

Reduce your sphere of control to increase your sphere of influence
Create customer-service splinter cells.  How does it work?  The Comcast Customer Connect group …continues to grow. It functions as an “early warning system” for Comcast customer service issues and is starting to get good press for this effort. This team is  changing minds about Comcast and changing Comcast’s idea of itself.

Frank Eliason says: “My goal is [to] change the perception individual customers who may have had a bad experience or reinforce the positive opinion of anyone who has a good experience.  I have one real goal, and it is a common start to conversations:  ‘Can I help?’  That to me is what it is all about.

Smash the silos
Cut through boundaries. The overlapping of products and services we experience today are complex. You have a Nokia phone and a T-Mobile account and use Twitter. When things go wrong, who do you contact? When you try to call any of these companies individually you get the “it’s not our problem” runaround….Once customers learned that T-Mobile was the culprit, they flooded the company’s call centers and forced the carrier’s hand to start working with Twitter and reinstate SMS.

The benefit of working this way is that these communications are an early warning signal from related apps. Network support can occur across ecosystems, and customers don’t need to necessarily know which company to call.

Love that last one. What comes clear in all of these discussions that are swirling around the truism that “Your company is what your customers say it is” is that the discussion of your interactions with your customers is already happening.  Our job now is to figure out the best, most effective ways to listen and respond.

Really enjoyed this post from Kelly at the MCE blog and wanted to share it.  One quote:

I hope that no American … will waste his franchise and throw away his vote by voting either for me or against me solely on account of my religious affiliation. It is not relevant.
—John F. Kennedy

Or on account of his skin color. Or on account of his age. We’re better than that. Vote for the mind, and the heart, and the visionary, unflagging spirit of your country’s next leader. Whomever you believe that should be.

Thanks Kelly!